The 2021 Bressler Award Winner

Did you get a chance to watch the Garret brothers event Monday night? 

The event, hosted by Soldiers To Sidelines, featured John, Jason and Judd Garrett, all Princeton football alums who have had long careers in football after graduation. They spoke about their experiences in the "family business," as they are the sons of a football coach, Jim Garrett, and they also talked about the 1987 Lehigh game, one Princeton won 16-15 after Jason led the team from its own 2 with 2:25 to play to the Lehigh 21 for a game-winning field goal as time expired.

TigerBlog wrote about the game Monday before the event.

He used the Daily Princetonian archives as part of the research. The only problem he had was that he didn't know the exact date of the game, so he chose a random Monday in October to check. He found out two things from that random Monday, which happened to be Oct. 5, 1987.

First, it was a week before the game was played, so he had to go to the Oct. 12 edition to read about Princeton-Lehigh football. Second, he stumbled on something he was not expecting on the Oct. 5 front page. 

The headline was: "McPhee reads from newest book, tells about Princeton childhood." The McPhee, of course, is John McPhee.

The newest book was called "Rising From The Plains." It was his 19th book; he's published 15 more since and has another, "Tabula Rasa," on the way. 

The story in The Prince mentioned how McPhee's wife Yolanda read from the book as well. "Rising From The Plains" talks about the geology of the Rocky Mountains, with pieces of a journal from the mother of a local geologist mixed in. Yolanda read the parts from the journal.

It's a book TB has not read yet. It's one he's going to read soon.

Speaking of geology, TigerBlog loved the video of Adam Maloof, the winner of the Marvin Bressler Award for 2021. The award is given each year to "that member of the Princeton family who, through heartfelt support of the University’s student-athletes and coaches, best embodies a belief in the lifelong lessons taught by competition and athletics as a complement to the overall educational mission. Awarded in the spirit of Marvin Bressler, professor of sociology, 1963-94."

Maloof is a geology professor at Princeton and a Faculty Fellow for the baseball team. TB has met him once, and it was when McPhee referred him to Maloof for his opinion on a rock that TB's mechanic Ron had found.

It was a very interesting experience, to say the least. It was also wildly fascinating. 

If you watch the video, you'll see Maloof as he shags fly balls during BP. You'll also see him in his trademark overalls, which he was wearing the day TB met him in his office. 

Maloof mentions that he never met Marvin Bressler. TigerBlog did. He knew him well.

TB remembers one time when he was at the Princeton men's basketball banquet when Pete Carril was still the head coach. As he gave out the B.F. Bunn Award, which is the top men's basketball honor, he mentioned that nobody knew who B.F. Bunn was anymore, so the significance of the award was best chronicled by those great players who had won it.

There are still people around Princeton who knew Marvin, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 87. TB is glad he is one of them.

Marv Bressler was a sociologist through and through. The entire world was his classroom. TB first got to know him through many nights at Contes after men's basketball games, when he would talk about that night's game and then essentially anything else that helped define human beings. He remains one of the most interesting people TB has ever met.

He served in the Army during World War II and then went to Temple for his undergraduate degree and Penn for his master's and Ph.D. He was the chair of the sociology department for 20 of the 30 years he taught at Princeton.

He was also the original Faculty Fellow, having mentored a young Gary Walters in the 1960s during his time on the men's basketball team. When Gary became the athletic director, he created the Faculty Fellows program to mirror his experience for the current generations of Princeton athletes. Since then, literally thousands of young people have benefited from the program, which Marv so easily described as "given them an adult to talk to if they need it."

He was quick-witted. He had a very deep voice. His head was completely shaved. He smoked a pipe. He was a very, very, very great man.

Today he lives on in the award that's named for him. 

The winner this year is Adam Maloof, who, as you can see from the video, is quite deserving of an honor that bears the name of Marvin Bressler.